UPDATE: The Craigslist Congressman Resigns–It Was a Sista Who Turned Him In

UPDATE: This is what I couldn’t say last night, that I knew that the woman who had exposed Congressman Lee was a black woman. Furthermore, she is a black woman who is NOT a hooker, NOT a golddigger, but a government employee who is a beautiful, professional, black single woman in her early 30s.

See, I know a black blogger who knew this woman personally, the blogger Rippa from The Intersection of Madness and Reality. In BlackBlogistan, everyone knows each other by six degrees. Late afternoon, he had sent a line to all of us Facebook subscribers that there was more to this breaking story, and that he really could not say more. Last night, however, I talked to Rippa via e-mail asking him for details, but promising to keep mum until the woman, still quite shaken up, had decided to tell her side of the story. Let me tell you, before the end of the exchange, I was laughing my ass off.

The Swirl doesn’t bother me at all; the Swirl is no big deal. It’s just that the former congressman was making up a resume–that’s probably totally different from his campaign platform–for this woman and coming across too strong for her taste. He asked her for naked pictures of herself, something that is a no-no for her. And then she found out that all that he told her was a phony. She was outraged. She cut off all communication with him. This woman had already met way too many phonies–mainly married guys looking for a little extra–on Craigslist. As Rippa states:

You see, I’ve known this woman for a number of years, and one thing we’ve always laughed about, is the way she would enact her “justice” on lying, cheating, and downright trifling men.

Let’s just say that this was the ultimate payback.

To say the least!

Of course, it is even more hilarious when these sanctimonious, jumped-up Repubs/Baggers think that they have a different, superior morality than those of us earthbound, live-and-let-live liberals/progressives or folks who just aren’t into the hypocrisies of church.

On the morning of Friday, January 14, a single 34-year-old woman put an ad in the “Women for Men” section of Craigslist personals. “Will someone prove to me not all CL men look like toads?” she asked, inviting “financially & emotionally secure” men to reply.

That afternoon, a man named Christopher Lee replied. He used a Gmail account that Rep. Christopher Lee has since confirmed to be his own. (It’s the same Gmail account that was associated with Lee’s personal Facebook account, which the Congressman deleted when we started asking questions.)

By email, Lee identified himself as a 39-year-old divorced lobbyist and sent a PG picture to the woman from the ad. (In fact, Lee is married and has one son with his wife. He’s also 46.)

Now according to the redacted e-mails, nothing had occurred except a little gentle interest and a little flirtation. They hadn’t made plans to meet, have dinner, or even to get down and dirty. Still, what’s a nice married boy like Lee doing in a place like Craiglist‘s “Women for Men” section showing his hairy chest and muscular bod in a bathroom to unattached women? You don’t go there looking for gardening equipment. Since Craigslist has taken down its infamous adult section, hookers could be lurking as well in this area of the site.

But the woman was smart. She was surprised at his interest, and that she would get a photo from him that quickly. (When certain guys send you their picture, whether on Craigslist or on other dating sites, some expect to see more of you, especially naked pictures.) She only sent a face photo of herself. She had no idea who he was, but she decided to look up his name online, and was appalled to find that her Christopher Lee was not some older English actor who used to do horror features or was in Star Wars, but was really a married congressman. She then went to Gawker with the proof of the exchange. Armed with this information, Gawker confronted Rep. Lee.

A spokesman for the Congressman confirmed that the email address belonged to Lee, and that he had deleted his Facebook account because our initial inquiry had him fretting about “privacy.”

Fretting, huh? And he was on Facebook, too? A rep for Lee claimed that someone had hacked into his account and used his name to make trouble for the congressman. Gawker isn’t buying it, showing that the incriminating e-mails had occurred the week before Lee wrote a note to his staff that he may have been hacked. Furthermore:

[…] The shirtless photo—which, according to metadata contained in the picture, was taken in Washington, D.C.—was taken with a Blackberry, the same mobile device that Lee uses, which means the hacker would have also accessed the photos on Lee’s phone. (And he’d still be the kind of guy who takes cellphone pictures of himself topless.) Finally, if someone had hacked into his account and was seeking to discredit the politician, why shoot in the dark with such relatively benign emails to a totally random middle-aged woman on Craigslist, who didn’t seem motivated one way or the other to us, beyond wanting to share a funny story? And funny it is.

Well, it ain’t funny now, at least to Lee and especially to his waiting wife, family, friends and constituents in upstate New York, looking for his explanation about these shenanigans. WIVB reported a few hours ago:

The media awaited the arrival of Chris Lee at the Buffalo-Niagara Airport Wednesday night after a staffer announced his resignation on the floor of the House of Representatives, but Lee never arrived.

Media outlets expected Lee to arrive in western New York Wednesday night after he made a comment to FOX News in Washington, D.C. He told their reporters, “I have to work this out with my wife.”

Though he was expected to arrive Wednesday night, our reporter Rich Newberg never saw him come through the airport. However, Newberg did have a chance to talk with many people at the airport who were amazed at Lee’s resignation, and many expressed disappointment. Many compared Lee to Eliot Spitzer, another politician with a lot of potential, whose career also went through political self-destruction.

Yeah, but they were raking Spitzer over the coals because he was a Democrat, way back when. And Lee would simply tell the Ministry of Propaganda, Faux Noise in D.C., what he was going to do, but not others. Mrs. Lee may be thinking divorce; and if she is and if they do, he can well afford it. Lee is from a very well-connected and rich western New York family. But he is, as we used to say, ruint.

And Craigslist? Well, at least, no one was murdered or raped this time. In cases like this one, it’s always “abyssus abyssum invocat.”

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